New Year's Resolutions

1. Eat healthy. I improved a lot last year, since I was cooking a lot of my own food, and managed to lower my (previously extremely high) cholesterol by 30 points—yay me! This year I want to start including more fiber in my diet—less white rice, more brown rice. Less caffeine, more herbal tea.

2. Drink less. This year, I want to cut back on alcohol, since eating a healthy dinner is no good if I wash it down with four beers and two red bull-and-jagers. I also had an epiphany earlier this year that the point of drinking isn’t to drink as much as I possibly can without passing out, said epiphany possibly triggered by the detained-at-the-mexican-border-for-being-too-drunk-to-say-“USA” incident, which my friends are STILL laughing at me for.

3. Be nicer to other people, especially my parents. I still argue with my dad sometimes because, deep down inside, I still resent him for marrying my stepmother. But I realize that this resentment is poisoning our relationship—my dad is a great guy, and he loves me very much, and I love him very much, and letting her get in the way of it will only make things worse for everyone in the long run. I’ve also resolved to be nicer to my stepmother, because even though she is a money-grubbing psychotic bitch, I should not allow her to turn me into a hateful and disrepsectful human being. My grandmother said something when I visited her a few weeks ago, and I really take it to heart—she told me that I shouldn’t let my stepmother or people like her to cause me to compromise my own manners, because respectfulness and kindness are part of my personality, and if I’m not normally a mean, ugly person, I shouldn’t be one to her either. I’ll get her one day, but now is not the time, and every moment I spend hating her makes me more miserable and makes my dad angrier at me for being bitchy to his wife. It’s just not worth it. I’ll most likely live to see her helpless and old, and I will have plenty of time to take things out on her then, when she most needs my help. Plus, I do believe in karma, and if there is a just god out there, she’s going to get hers, and expending energy hating her will only cause me more stress.

4. Don't let law school crush my soul. The pressure of law school is causing me to rearrange my priorities, let friendships slip between the cracks, neglect my family, miss appointments…and this should not happen.

5. Exercise more. Tim and I just bought annual passes to the Zoo and Wild Animal Park, and we’ve resolved to go at least once a month. It’s a great way to get exercise (the parks are HUGE and lots of uphill terrain) and you get to ogle the pandas and make fun of the uglier animals while burning fat!

6. Form my own opinion on things, and become a more critical reader. Too often, I find myself adopting the viewpoint of the articles I read. I resolve to be more critical of things I read, especially if I don’t agree with it at the outset. This has been an ongoing personal goal of mine, and it’s why I linked The Right Coast on my “Recommended Blogs” section—they may be a bunch of right-wing zealots, but their posts are compelling and cause me to see both sides of the argument. I’ve always hated that some people run around parroting the viewpoint of the latest pundit/author/critic they’ve read as if they came up with these ideas themselves…but how often do I do this myself? It’s very easy to skip the analytical process and adopt other’s views as your own, but I think I’ll gain more by questioning the ideas of those whose ideas I most agree with, and trying to understand those whose ideas I dislike. Not that I’m not going to take a stand for what I believe is right…I just want to make sure it’s really what I believe, not what I’ve mindlessly adopted from someone else.